ArticleBMC microbiology2016
Acanthamoeba containing endosymbiotic chlamydia isolated from hospital environments and its potential role in inflammatory exacerbation.
Article in BMC microbiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Microbial Trojan Horse and Antimicrobial Resistance: Acanthamoeba as an Environmental Reservoir for Multidrug Resistant Bacteria.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Review
- First report on the long-term viability ofJournal of water and health · 2024Article
- A Systematic Review of Intracellular Microorganisms withinPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Environmental Metagenomic Assemblies Reveal Seven New Highly Divergent Chlamydial Lineages and Hallmarks of a Conserved Intracellular Lifestyle.Frontiers in microbiology · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEnvironmental chlamydiae belonging to the Parachlamydiaceae are obligate intracellular bacteria that infect Acanthamoeba, a free-living amoeba, and are a risk for hospital-acquired pneumonia. However, whether amoebae harboring environmental chlamydiae actually survive in hospital environments is unknown. We therefore isolated living amoebae with symbiotic chlamydiae from hospital environments.
resultsOne hundred smear samples were collected from Hokkaido University Hospital, Sapporo, Japan; 50 in winter (February to March, 2012) and 50 in summer (August, 2012), and used for the study. Acanthamoebae were isolated from the smear samples, and endosymbiotic chlamydial traits were assessed by infectivity, cytokine induction, and draft genomic analysis. From these, 23 amoebae were enriched on agar plates spread with heat-killed Escherichia coli. Amoeba prevalence was greater in the summer-collected samples (15/30, 50%) than those of the winter season (8/30, 26.7%), possibly indicating a seasonal variation (p = 0.096). Morphological assessment of cysts revealed 21 amoebae (21/23, 91%) to be Acanthamoeba, and cultures in PYG medium were established for 11 of these amoebae. Three amoebae contained environmental chlamydiae; however, only one amoeba (Acanthamoeba T4) with an environmental chlamydia (Protochlamydia W-9) was shown the infectious ability to Acanthamoeba C3 (reference amoebae). While Protochlamydia W-9 could infect C3 amoeba, it failed to replicate in immortal human epithelial, although exposure of HEp-2 cells to living bacteria induced the proinflammatory cytokine, IL-8. Comparative genome analysis with KEGG revealed similar genomic features compared with other Protochlamydia genomes (UWE25 and R18), except for a lack of genes encoding the type IV secretion system. Interestingly, resistance genes associated with several antibiotics and toxic compounds were identified.
conclusionThese findings are the first demonstration of the distribution in a hospital of a living Acanthamoeba carrying an endosymbiotic chlamydial pathogen.
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